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Her apartment looks like she just moved in. Reminiscent of when she first did, though she’s almost sure the number of boxes is the same. Amma’s handwriting scribbled in Sharpie on the sides of boxes stares at her. Samira’s books. Samira’s trophies and certificates. Photo albums. Samira’s shalwar kameez.
Most of her traditional wear stayed in New Jersey, given that’s where she wore it often, and though she likely won’t have an occasion to wear these clothes, casual and not, here in Pittsburgh, Samira couldn’t find it in herself to get rid of them. So she hangs the sets in her closet, giving it a fuller, brighter look. There’s even a box of traditional jewelry that Amma told her to take, real gold and silver, rubies and pearls, gleaming quietly in the container, and Samira wonders if she will ever wear those here, either.
But there is one piece of jewelry she can’t let go of that Amma had gifted her. A pair of anklets—payals—that Baba had gotten Amma when Samira was young, after he returned from a trip to India. He wasn’t much of a gift giver, but sometimes he would come through. Gold with small connecting chains, simple in the sense that there are no bells to clink together with every step. Amma wanted her to have one, while she kept the other. Samira’s hand shook when she had picked it up, holding her breath as she sat down, brought her knee up, and unclasped the payal to bring around her ankle. A perfect fit.
Simple and quiet, pretty in its elegance. She could wear it to work, a piece of home to carry under her scrubs.
Home. Is it even home anymore?
No, it’s not. Nothing of her remains in that house; the walls are haunted with memories that will go unnoticed by the new owners. Memories her mother has finally let go of. But Samira is stuck. It seems to be her new state of being lately.
Coffee. Work. Sleep. Repeat. It had always been like that, truthfully, only now she wonders what she’s moving towards. What’s the end game? Where will she end up? The path ahead is covered in debris, her meticulously set plan blown to bits, and if she isn’t working towards moving back home, then what else is there? What does she have left?
She no longer knows; but the one payal is cool around her ankle, a memento of home she carries, now, daily. It keeps her grounded, prevents her from spiraling too much.
She gets away with wearing it for a few weeks. Until one night.
Or day, really. Leaving work at 7:45AM, shouldering her bag, the bottoms of her sneakers squeaking along the linoleum floor as she drags her feet on her way out of the hospital, cringing at the sight of Chairs for the day shift she isn’t working on.
“It’ll be just as busy when you come back next shift,” her ride home says from next to her, and Samira scoffs tiredly as she rolls her eyes over at him.
“Is that meant to be comforting?” she asks dryly as he holds the door open for her, the rising sun already warm against her skin. “I thought you had better bedside manner than that.”
Abbot’s low chuckle sends a shiver down her spine she half expects, though it still tightens her fingers on the strap of her bag. The sounds of his laughs—because there are multiple ones, and she has started a game with herself to see how many she can catalogue—make her heart trip up. She is not a fool as to not understand why, but it’s something Samira actively does not let her thoughts linger on for too long. She doesn’t think she can afford it.
She has too much to figure out, too much that has thrown her world off its axis. She tries not to think about Jack Abbot even if, lately, there is a nagging, incessant, getting-louder-by-the-day voice in her head that taunts her with the idea—the hope—that he could be the one to right her off-kilter axis.
But Samira doesn’t need rescuing. She has handled life on her own so far. It’s a little fucked, sure, but she can fix it. She has time. Right?
She does.
Right?
“My bedside manner is impeccable,” Abbot says lazily, like he’s talking about the weather, as they approach his trusted Land Cruiser parked along the street. “All of my patients love me.”
If it were any other doctor, despite her exhaustion, Samira would have rolled her eyes at the ego. But Abbot’s delivery is casual, matter-of-fact, and the truth is, Samira knows him. She knows he isn’t lying. As stoic as he may be, he shows up for his patients. The same way she shows up for her own patients; above and beyond and then some. There is a lot about Jack Abbot that Samira is still learning—but she finds herself liking every bit, with every layer peeled back to show her more.
“Of course, they do,” Samira muses, biting the inside of her cheek when he opens the passenger door for her. She pauses, facing him where he stands with his hand on top of the door, her smile teasing yet honest. “You’re their hero.”
The flash of his smile does that ill-advised thing to her heart again. Like it’s tripping over its nonexistent feet, stalling the next breath she’s meant to take. In the glow of the rising sun, his hair looks lighter, curls gleaming under the sunlight, his dimple shadowed under the layer of growing stubble.
And for an insane moment, Samira wonders if his hair would feel as soft between her fingers as it looks. She wonders if his stubble would be as deliciously rough against her skin as she thinks.
“I’m just at the right place at the right time,” he says with a shrug, and she wants to laugh at his show of humility, complete with a humble shrug that has her shaking her head. “Speaking of which—” His hand digs into the pocket of his scrub pants and when he pulls it out a moment later, Samira’s eyes widen with a gasp stuck in her throat. “I think this belongs to you.”
The gold payal gleams as it dangles from where one end of the clasp is pinched between his finger and thumb, and Samira stares at it in disbelief, as if she might be imagining it. Absently, she drops her bag behind her onto the floor of the passenger seat, sitting sideways with her foot propped on the runner as her hand reaches for her ankle. “How—”
Of course, she doesn’t feel it around her ankle as she stares at the jewelry in Abbot’s grasp. “I saw it fall when Shen pulled you in for that last trauma,” he says, shifting so he’s standing in front of her. From where she sits, he practically towers over her, the breadth of his broad shoulders blocking her from the sun. “I should’ve given it to you sooner, but—”
“No, no.” Samira’s mouth dries as Abbot hands it over to her, and if he notices the slight trembling of her fingers as she takes it back, he doesn’t comment on it. Samira’s eyes don’t burn, but the tears lump together in her throat as her thumb runs along the main, thicker chain. “I’m glad you held onto it. Thank you.”
She sees him nod as she bends down, pulling up her right pant leg before she grasps both ends of the payal and goes to put it on. But the angle is wrong, awkward and a little uncomfortable—the runner too low and she refuses to put her shoe on his car seat—and her fingers won’t stop shaking, so she can’t fucking do it, and she’s angry that she let something her father picked out slip from her person without her even noticing that she can’t get it on and—
“May I?”
Samira’s head lifts at Abbot’s question—softly spoken, almost carefully. As though he’s fearful of crossing a line that Samira suddenly, boldly, wantingly, wishes to leap over. When she looks up at him, he is watching her cautiously, the muscle in his jaw working as he towers over her. But instead of being intimidated, Samira wants him closer. It’s why it’s startlingly easy to say, “Yes.”
His mouth twitches like he might smile, but he purses his lips in the next half second. Samira doesn’t breathe—she’s not sure she even could if she tried—when Abbot bends at his right leg, left knee against the hard pavement as he kneels before her in the open doorway of his car, and before Samira can protest on behalf of his discomfort, he is already taking the payal from her.
She watches, transfixed, as Abbot pushes the small handle to open the hook of the clasp with his thumb, the other holding the other end, and she’s not sure she blinks as he brings the jewelry around her ankle from the back. Her throat works when the back of his knuckles brush against her skin, another shiver threatening to run through her from his touch rather than the cool jewelry.
She does not know where to look: at the way his hazel eyes focus on a task she knows is simple enough for him to do with his eyes closed; at the way his gently pursed lips sit; at the rough pads of his fingers against the soft skin of her ankle when he secures the payal and he makes Samira’s already quick pulse grow erratic when he tenderly adjusts the jewelry so it sits properly with the clasp at the back.
Samira still doesn’t breathe. Abbot doesn’t get up just yet. The world beyond them doesn’t seem to exist, the bustle of the slowly waking city too muffled by her thundering heart. His eyes are on the payal and her skin is warm from the weight of his gaze and not the morning sun, the breath hitching in her throat when Abbot’s fingers, almost absently, brush along the chain.
“My dad gave it to my mom,” she finds herself saying. The words are quiet but they don’t get lost in the space between them. “She has the other one. I—” Samira clears her throat as Abbot’s gaze lifts so it can meet hers. She wants to count his freckles. She keeps her eyes locked with his. “A piece of my dad for both of us.”
He doesn’t look away from her. “It’s beautiful.”
She misses his touch when he pulls his hands away, one resting on his knee while the other pulls her pant leg back down, careful not to touch her skin this time around. In the quiet of their bubble, Samira says, “Thank you for picking it up. If I’d lost it, I would have—”
Her throat locks, working in a swallow in an attempt to get rid of the lump that had already formed from the sin of letting it slip without noticing. If Samira had lost it permanently, Amma would have been disappointed, sure, but Samira would have fallen victim to the guilt of it.
“But you didn’t,” Abbot assures in that low, sure tone that leaves no room for argument. He remains kneeling, looking up at her with a calmness that somehow manages to seep under her skin, slowing down her pulse as she clenches her scrubs at her calves. “And if it makes you feel any better—I’ll keep an eye out from now on.”
If his goal was to get a laugh out of her, he succeeds. Against all odds, of course he succeeds. “Or I could stop wearing it at work,” she says, running her fingers through her hair that is out of its bun.
Abbot’s eyebrows furrow a little. “You could,” he agrees slowly. “But if this is how you choose to carry a piece of your dad with you, I’d be a hypocrite to talk you out of it.”
Samira’s gaze drops, then, to his hand that idly runs down the front of his thigh. To the metal band that catches against the sunlight, and she knows. He understands her, Samira realizes, in ways that not even Amma does, in ways that no one else seems to because she hasn’t let them close enough.
She doesn’t know, exactly, when she let Abbot get close enough to see her, but she cannot bring herself to protest it. It is an easy acceptance.
With her foot propped up on the runner, her payal peeks out from under the hem of her pants, gleaming gold. Against the dark material of his scrubs, Abbot’s wedding band is a sleek, slate gray that matches in its shine.
She is curious about the memories locked in that ring, just as she is eager to talk about the ones held inside her payal.
“You’re many things, Abbot. A hypocrite isn’t one of them,” Samira says quietly, heart thump-thump-thumping in a quickening beat as she finds even just a little bit of courage as her skin heats. Be brave; break the expectant cycle. “I’d be happy to remind you—over breakfast.”
Her cheeks are on fire even before the words leave her mouth, already thinking she should be mortified for that misplaced sense of audacity. Samira has half a mind to take it back—she just asked out and attending, for God’s sake. When was the last time she asked anyone out? Hell, when was the last time she had even been on a date?
One look at Abbot, and Samira knows she has caught him off guard. He stares up at her with unblinking eyes, lips ever so slightly parted without a sound, and she wants the earth to open up beneath her and swallow her whole. What was she thinking? If she wanted to step out from the norm of her every day routine, she could’ve started small. Like trying a new scent of bodywash. Not ask out Jack fucking Abbot—
“I can’t deny an offer like that.” Her pulse skitters at the beginnings of a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth, the kind of smile that makes the crinkles by his eyes come alive. Samira has to bite back her own smile, disbelieving and happy, as Abbot gets to his feet easily, once again towering over her. He nods his chin at her and she takes the silent instruction, turning her legs into the car and sitting properly. She’s a moment away from taking her first real breath as Abbot steps back, hand resting on top of the car door, and he says, “By the way—” Samira looks up at him and now that smile is actually there, showing a flash of white teeth, a coolness in his gaze that makes her dizzy even as she sits. “Gold’s a good color on you.”
It’s only the first instance of many that her baba’s payal proves to be a good luck charm, memories and magic turning the tide exactly when Samira needed it the most.